Kind: captions
Language: en
the art of being a good scientist is
actually having good taste in questions
questions that are answerable and
interesting I am Andrea Ghez GHz
black holes supermassive black holes the
most exotic objects in the universe
it says child they used to keep me up at
night
what does it mean that something has no
finite size no edge no beginning no end
I think my first fascination with
science and astronomy and astrophysics
came from the moon landing and I was
totally fascinated got me hurt there's
maybe the confession that not only did I
want to be an astronaut but I also
wanted to be a ballerina it wasn't
obvious to me that I would become a
scientist the Stars have a life cycle
they're born they live and then the most
massive stars end up as black holes they
are defined by their immense immense
amounts of gravity gravity is so intense
that nothing can escape it not even
light is there a supermassive black hole
at the center of the galaxy matter as it
gets close to the black hole due to the
very intense gravity starts to move at
very high speeds so to prove that
there's a supermassive black hole at the
center the galaxy we're gonna watch the
orbits of stars the stars that are as
close to the center of the galaxy as
possible which means that I want the
largest telescope I can possibly get my
hands on
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not a bad place to have to go to work
it's the largest telescope in the world
which means I can see closer to the
center of the galaxy in theory the
problem for the Keck telescope is that
it's here on earth and we have to see
through our atmosphere a total headache
for astronomers the stars look like big
blobs the Earth's atmosphere is like a
circus funhouse mirror
so if you look at yourself in the
funhouse mirror you look completely
distorted and then we introduce a second
mirror that's the exact opposite shape
to correct for the distorting effects of
the Earth's atmosphere these are a
factor 20 sharper than if you had done
nothing and for the first time we can
see the center of the galaxy and in
particular these stars they're the ones
that are gonna tell us what's at the
center of the galaxy so we started off
in 1995 and every year since then we've
taken an image just take a picture and
you watch how things move on the plane
of the sky
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up to ten million miles per hour they're
really hauling
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four million times the mass of the Sun
this is the proof that there's a
supermassive black hole at the center of
our galaxy and that supermassive black
holes really do exist I think I think we
have people convinced
you